Cecily Brown

Sensual painting

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Born in London in 1969 (but she has been living in New York for quite some time), she reached success thanks to a sensual style of painting that hides between brush strokes that seem, at first glance, confusing, so sped up that the figures are broken down in colorful prisms, sometimes filled with a Lucien Freud-esque dramatic power. “Oil painting suggests carnality and body fluids”, she once said.

And continues to think so, “even if today I don’t need to say it any more and my idea of painting goes beyond the body, filled with life itself, of everything one can think, feel or imagine.” So her art is not made of only sex: never obvious, it’s nourished by the great lessons of the past, from Bosch to Symbolism, but also Bruegel, Ensor, de Kooning, and it seeks confrontation with what she defines as “heroes”: with the death of Bacon she said that finally her work was easier. “I was biased, what I wanted to say is that you’re destined to stay in the shadow while the giants of art are still alive. But when they die, you feel more insecure to invade their territory…”.